Last month I posted a video on how to start a fire with a ferro rod. It was a quick fun video that my kids and I put together. In that video I used my US Navy Ka-bar knife as the ferro rod striker. The problem with the way I used the Ka-Bar in that video was that I used the blade of the knife as the striker, and that prompted a comment from one of the users on Reddit that using the blade as the striker will dull or ruin the blade.

The reason I had to do that was because of the black coating on the Ka-Bar blade. The coating makes it just about impossible to get a spark from a ferro rod off the spine of the blade. Still though, the Reddit user was right, it's not a good idea to use the blade for striking a ferro rod.

Because of that, and because I love my Ka-Bar so much I decided to modify it a but. I mean, Ka-Bar's are some of the best knives ever made, so why not try to make it work as your goto survival knife right?

What I did was take a file and I filed off a small section on the back of the spine for use as a striker. It is a very simple modification, and it worked like a charm!

Here is a video of me using the Ka-Bar to strike the ferro rod and use some pine scrapings as tinder to catch on fire.

As you can see after filing off some of the coating it works fairly well as a ferro rod striker. If you want to do something similar just make sure to keep that part oiled, or put a dab of gun bluing on it to keep if from rusting since a Ka-Bar is made out of carbon steel instead of stainless steel.

EDIT: I went a step farther and used a grinder to make the area on the back even better for use as a ferro rod striker. Check out the updated video: